Thank you for the comment. Legacy certainly has a lot to offer and I think that many players that play for years will sooner or later gravitate towards Legacy. It is also a good mix of competitive environment and environment when one can experiment or bring his/her own deck.
Legacy Gauntlet seemed as a nice step to show players how Legacy can look like but it felt completely different than playing Competitive League (Legacy in general). People were struggling a lot with their decks and for some reason I've been running into Reanimator decks all the time. But that also might be due to many people just dropping out of the league by round 1.
I hope WotC will support Eternal formats on modo. Yesterday I played against Canadian Treshhold build from Eternal Masters so maybe things will get better. (still there was like 200 people in the League which is not much).
I have played more Legacy than every other format, and I agree that it is a great format to play. You can definitely experience the nostalgia of playing with cards like Swords to Plowshares, Force of Wills, etc, and the Revised dual lands.
The Legacy Gauntlet which finished last week was a really great idea to bring new people to Legacy. I hope WoTC do more of this in future.
How so? If they have their own Coalition Honor Guard? Out of the W/x archetypes, G/W was the only one playing Coalition Honor Guard. Yes, it is an annoying card to play against, but I imagine more often than not you'll be the only one taking them. And/or your opponent won't think to side it in (more often than not).
Ad hominem does not really strengthen your argument there. And it is clear we have reached an impasse. I won't respond in kind. Just a reminder "NO" is not a proper rebuttal.
Only a rationalist could come up with something so irrational as the product of human reproduction is not a human. All births, including failed abortion attempts, prove that the fetus is a human, and we know by its processes that it is living. Abortion is the termination of human life. I may not have a uterus, but the mother doesn't have her fetus's heartbeat, either. That heartbeat belongs to a different body.
No site on the internet is 100% safe. Joshua does a pretty good job of weeding out the worst offenders. As for civil discourse I am doing my part I think. Please let me know if I have strayed over the line. As to what happened, Pete touched a nerve. And imho good for him. About time we as a community talk about some of this stuff. Civilly of course. We are Brethren and Sisters in this game and in life even if we don't acknowledge it.
If you poke an earthworm it squirms as well. If you poke a plant it responds even if you don't see the response Living things interact with the universe around them. Some more obviously than others. Being living and or alive does not mean something is automatically sacrosanct and that it is morally reprehensible to kill them.
Just saw a young hawk (maybe a hand span wide at full wing), take down a baby Bluejay and then fly off being pursued by two adult Bluejays. (The hawk got away with its prey.) None of the above birds fit the usual definition of sentient. Though it would not be hard to anthropomorphize the scene to make them seem so.
The point I was making about 'soul' is that, while I disagree with the religious argument about soul, I can't disprove it anymore than we can prove or disprove fetuses are intelligent. Intelligence is something easily discernible in a new born even if it is born with defects and diseases. The same can't be said of a fetus even 'in vitro'.
As soon as it is provable that fetuses are intelligent, I will be against abortions. That still won't sway me from my philosophy that it is a woman's choice what to do with her body. No matter how disgusted others may be by those choices.
In addition to event timelines, win/loss records of some format-specific decks, price listings, and judicial musings over card abilities, a well-known and prolific writer of things MTG asks us to be kinder.
...and then the comments section blew up, mostly about the request to be kinder with each other.
Please help me understand what happened. This is a safe website, right? We can have civil discussions, right?
There are plenty of atheists and humanists against abortion. The fetus is a living human with many differences from fungi, skin cells, and moles. If you poke a mole, it doesn't squirm. None of these differences are unique to life outside the womb. This is why the soul is left out of the discussion.
As to whether or not fetuses are intelligent that is a far cry from stating they are living tissue. Much of your body is living long after you die. Would you consider cremation then an immoral act (all other reasons why it might be, aside)?
I don't agree with "abortion is murder" (that is a moral judgment). It may be wrong (I can't decide for others in that case) but it may just be the dissolution of life that never was fated to be sentient.
We might as well call all killing of life murder and do away with antibiotics, chemical sanitizers and fly/bug spray if the fact that it is living is the test.
If however, and this is key to what I WAS saying: you could prove definitively that fetuses were intelligent, THAT imho would be murder (whether legal or not) and since we haven't and as far as I can tell, can't prove it, the default is: protoplasm. No more of consequence than getting a mole removed or a fungus infection killed via anti-fungal creme.
The whole religious aspect is actually a key argument about whether abortion should be legal or not. The religious argument isn't at all about intelligence but about soul. Those who favor the "pro-life" stance argue that conception creates a soul that is housed within the protoplasm that eventually forms a baby in the uterus.
Those who favor the pro-choice stance don't consider that to be relevant to the discussion at all but do tend to err on the side of proven data because how do we measure a soul or it's intrinsic value?
Whereas a mother's concern for her own health, circumstance and well being are real and in some cases quite immediate.
Personally I don't promote abortion. I think that is something each mother must decide for herself and as a male I will never (fortunately) be placed in such a position to make such a terrible choice. If I did have to make such a choice I don't know how I would choose. I would not expect a government entity to make that decision for me.
So please be to clear: I am not promoting "murder of innocent ... babies" (How very nasty minded of you, that you would accuse someone of that after one post!) I am as a rationalist, a progressive and an agnostic, promoting self-determination and choice without need of government consent. Until such time anyway as we can more properly ascertain harm greater than that threatened to the mother who does not abort her fetus.
So your argument is because science, which is a radically different study every twenty years, hasn't officially named a fetus an intelligent person, abortion is ok? You're making quite a gamble there: that when science does declare it a person or not, you're that sure that scientists will say it's not and all these abortions will just have been okay.
Fetuses are scientifically proven organisms. They respond to stimuli, consume energy, reproduce cells using a genetic code, create wastes, move. All of these are functions of living things, not growths or tumors. There is no characteristic of a living thing that changes in and out of the womb for a fetus. If it is a living thing (which is the definition of an organism), is your argument that it is not intelligent, so it's okay to kill them? That's a dangerous logical precedent. Is your argument that the fetus is not human but some other animal and evolves into a human upon delivery?
I'm leaving religion, homosexuality, etc. out of this discussion intentionally, even though I know that is the context. Abortion is not intrinsically a religious argument. Take AR-15s out of homes, make them illegal for purchase, remove the use of "gay" as a pejorative, allow gays to marry and sell them cake, all that stuff, but please stop promoting the murder of the innocent, unborn, living babies, especially with the argument "we don't know yet whether they are living and it is not okay or unliving and it is okay."
You are implying something unproven: namely that aborted fetuses are intelligent and people; Not merely protoplasm being formed into eventual people. Even among the religious this is a controversial and much debated but totally unproven concept.
For the record, I have NEVER met a woman who aborted a fetus who did so because they were simply hedonists who were dealing with an inconvenience. Every single one I have met had both regrets and relief because they were not prepared to raise the resulting child if they carried to term. Particularly those who were forcefully impregnated. Not to mention the not inconsiderable health risks to some.
Also do you have some kind of actual corroboration of that number or is it merely a guesstimate?
Finally, this whole line of tit-for-tat reasoning is wrong. Just because religious nuts kill people does not make all religious people nuts or killers any more than atheist heads of state represent atheists when they are committing atrocities.
What about the 58 million Americans aborted since Roe (1972)? The vast majority of those have been definitely sacrificed at the altars of hedonism or materialism.
The examples you cite generally didn't kill people because of or in the name of atheism. Nearly all of Pete's examples did kill people because and in the name of religion. It's not a good analogy.
Atheists haven't had clean hands, either. Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao,... They hated religion and millions of people died because of them. The root cause of "atrocious things" is people. There are bad people in all walks of life and all pursuits.
It reminds me of the story of the guy who said he didn't want to go to church because of all the bad people there. His friend told him that if he wanted to avoid bad people then he should stay home because there are bad people at school, at work, at Walmart, at the doctor's office, etc., etc.
I saw the Mono-Red Devotion deck and gave it a go. Unfortunately I was quite underwhelmed. The concept is cool but the deck is pretty slow without Nykthos. The Leylines are a nice idea but given that there are only 8 cards that actually care about Devotion they tend to be dead cards if you don't draw Nykthos or Fanatic.
I'd be more impressed with religious values if there wasn't an extensive list of atrocious things done in the name of each of them.
There aren't exemptions from that either, all have outliers to any extreme.
Great opinion section, and I'm truly surprised by the bigotry in the Facebook comments (although perhaps I shouldn't be). Seeing those people try to justify their hatred by claiming that a condemnation of prejudice is "taking a moral high ground", or citing "judeo-christian values" that leads to "decent people"... it's almost too much. Funny and sad at the same time.
Thank you for the comment. Legacy certainly has a lot to offer and I think that many players that play for years will sooner or later gravitate towards Legacy. It is also a good mix of competitive environment and environment when one can experiment or bring his/her own deck.
Legacy Gauntlet seemed as a nice step to show players how Legacy can look like but it felt completely different than playing Competitive League (Legacy in general). People were struggling a lot with their decks and for some reason I've been running into Reanimator decks all the time. But that also might be due to many people just dropping out of the league by round 1.
I hope WotC will support Eternal formats on modo. Yesterday I played against Canadian Treshhold build from Eternal Masters so maybe things will get better. (still there was like 200 people in the League which is not much).
Great article.
I have played more Legacy than every other format, and I agree that it is a great format to play. You can definitely experience the nostalgia of playing with cards like Swords to Plowshares, Force of Wills, etc, and the Revised dual lands.
The Legacy Gauntlet which finished last week was a really great idea to bring new people to Legacy. I hope WoTC do more of this in future.
How so? If they have their own Coalition Honor Guard? Out of the W/x archetypes, G/W was the only one playing Coalition Honor Guard. Yes, it is an annoying card to play against, but I imagine more often than not you'll be the only one taking them. And/or your opponent won't think to side it in (more often than not).
This, as well as all of stsungs articles have been put back up after the author requested time to fix images due to a snafu with image hosting.
Ad hominem does not really strengthen your argument there. And it is clear we have reached an impasse. I won't respond in kind. Just a reminder "NO" is not a proper rebuttal.
I haven't seen anything that has really crossed any lines yet. It's been for the most part civil. I'm happy about that.
Thank you so much Paul Leicht. You're exactly 100% right on all counts and saved me from having to type all of that up and wade into the morass.
Only a rationalist could come up with something so irrational as the product of human reproduction is not a human. All births, including failed abortion attempts, prove that the fetus is a human, and we know by its processes that it is living. Abortion is the termination of human life. I may not have a uterus, but the mother doesn't have her fetus's heartbeat, either. That heartbeat belongs to a different body.
No site on the internet is 100% safe. Joshua does a pretty good job of weeding out the worst offenders. As for civil discourse I am doing my part I think. Please let me know if I have strayed over the line. As to what happened, Pete touched a nerve. And imho good for him. About time we as a community talk about some of this stuff. Civilly of course. We are Brethren and Sisters in this game and in life even if we don't acknowledge it.
If you poke an earthworm it squirms as well. If you poke a plant it responds even if you don't see the response Living things interact with the universe around them. Some more obviously than others. Being living and or alive does not mean something is automatically sacrosanct and that it is morally reprehensible to kill them.
Just saw a young hawk (maybe a hand span wide at full wing), take down a baby Bluejay and then fly off being pursued by two adult Bluejays. (The hawk got away with its prey.) None of the above birds fit the usual definition of sentient. Though it would not be hard to anthropomorphize the scene to make them seem so.
The point I was making about 'soul' is that, while I disagree with the religious argument about soul, I can't disprove it anymore than we can prove or disprove fetuses are intelligent. Intelligence is something easily discernible in a new born even if it is born with defects and diseases. The same can't be said of a fetus even 'in vitro'.
As soon as it is provable that fetuses are intelligent, I will be against abortions. That still won't sway me from my philosophy that it is a woman's choice what to do with her body. No matter how disgusted others may be by those choices.
In addition to event timelines, win/loss records of some format-specific decks, price listings, and judicial musings over card abilities, a well-known and prolific writer of things MTG asks us to be kinder.
...and then the comments section blew up, mostly about the request to be kinder with each other.
Please help me understand what happened. This is a safe website, right? We can have civil discussions, right?
There are plenty of atheists and humanists against abortion. The fetus is a living human with many differences from fungi, skin cells, and moles. If you poke a mole, it doesn't squirm. None of these differences are unique to life outside the womb. This is why the soul is left out of the discussion.
As to whether or not fetuses are intelligent that is a far cry from stating they are living tissue. Much of your body is living long after you die. Would you consider cremation then an immoral act (all other reasons why it might be, aside)?
I don't agree with "abortion is murder" (that is a moral judgment). It may be wrong (I can't decide for others in that case) but it may just be the dissolution of life that never was fated to be sentient.
We might as well call all killing of life murder and do away with antibiotics, chemical sanitizers and fly/bug spray if the fact that it is living is the test.
If however, and this is key to what I WAS saying: you could prove definitively that fetuses were intelligent, THAT imho would be murder (whether legal or not) and since we haven't and as far as I can tell, can't prove it, the default is: protoplasm. No more of consequence than getting a mole removed or a fungus infection killed via anti-fungal creme.
The whole religious aspect is actually a key argument about whether abortion should be legal or not. The religious argument isn't at all about intelligence but about soul. Those who favor the "pro-life" stance argue that conception creates a soul that is housed within the protoplasm that eventually forms a baby in the uterus.
Those who favor the pro-choice stance don't consider that to be relevant to the discussion at all but do tend to err on the side of proven data because how do we measure a soul or it's intrinsic value?
Whereas a mother's concern for her own health, circumstance and well being are real and in some cases quite immediate.
Personally I don't promote abortion. I think that is something each mother must decide for herself and as a male I will never (fortunately) be placed in such a position to make such a terrible choice. If I did have to make such a choice I don't know how I would choose. I would not expect a government entity to make that decision for me.
So please be to clear: I am not promoting "murder of innocent ... babies" (How very nasty minded of you, that you would accuse someone of that after one post!) I am as a rationalist, a progressive and an agnostic, promoting self-determination and choice without need of government consent. Until such time anyway as we can more properly ascertain harm greater than that threatened to the mother who does not abort her fetus.
So your argument is because science, which is a radically different study every twenty years, hasn't officially named a fetus an intelligent person, abortion is ok? You're making quite a gamble there: that when science does declare it a person or not, you're that sure that scientists will say it's not and all these abortions will just have been okay.
Fetuses are scientifically proven organisms. They respond to stimuli, consume energy, reproduce cells using a genetic code, create wastes, move. All of these are functions of living things, not growths or tumors. There is no characteristic of a living thing that changes in and out of the womb for a fetus. If it is a living thing (which is the definition of an organism), is your argument that it is not intelligent, so it's okay to kill them? That's a dangerous logical precedent. Is your argument that the fetus is not human but some other animal and evolves into a human upon delivery?
I'm leaving religion, homosexuality, etc. out of this discussion intentionally, even though I know that is the context. Abortion is not intrinsically a religious argument. Take AR-15s out of homes, make them illegal for purchase, remove the use of "gay" as a pejorative, allow gays to marry and sell them cake, all that stuff, but please stop promoting the murder of the innocent, unborn, living babies, especially with the argument "we don't know yet whether they are living and it is not okay or unliving and it is okay."
You are implying something unproven: namely that aborted fetuses are intelligent and people; Not merely protoplasm being formed into eventual people. Even among the religious this is a controversial and much debated but totally unproven concept.
For the record, I have NEVER met a woman who aborted a fetus who did so because they were simply hedonists who were dealing with an inconvenience. Every single one I have met had both regrets and relief because they were not prepared to raise the resulting child if they carried to term. Particularly those who were forcefully impregnated. Not to mention the not inconsiderable health risks to some.
Also do you have some kind of actual corroboration of that number or is it merely a guesstimate?
Finally, this whole line of tit-for-tat reasoning is wrong. Just because religious nuts kill people does not make all religious people nuts or killers any more than atheist heads of state represent atheists when they are committing atrocities.
What about the 58 million Americans aborted since Roe (1972)? The vast majority of those have been definitely sacrificed at the altars of hedonism or materialism.
The examples you cite generally didn't kill people because of or in the name of atheism. Nearly all of Pete's examples did kill people because and in the name of religion. It's not a good analogy.
Atheists haven't had clean hands, either. Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao,... They hated religion and millions of people died because of them. The root cause of "atrocious things" is people. There are bad people in all walks of life and all pursuits.
It reminds me of the story of the guy who said he didn't want to go to church because of all the bad people there. His friend told him that if he wanted to avoid bad people then he should stay home because there are bad people at school, at work, at Walmart, at the doctor's office, etc., etc.
I saw the Mono-Red Devotion deck and gave it a go. Unfortunately I was quite underwhelmed. The concept is cool but the deck is pretty slow without Nykthos. The Leylines are a nice idea but given that there are only 8 cards that actually care about Devotion they tend to be dead cards if you don't draw Nykthos or Fanatic.
The destruction of the Temple was an inside job!
Have heard of any Jedi atrocities...oh wait. nvm. Real world analogy though maybe American Indian faiths?
I'd be more impressed with religious values if there wasn't an extensive list of atrocious things done in the name of each of them.
There aren't exemptions from that either, all have outliers to any extreme.
Great opinion section, and I'm truly surprised by the bigotry in the Facebook comments (although perhaps I shouldn't be). Seeing those people try to justify their hatred by claiming that a condemnation of prejudice is "taking a moral high ground", or citing "judeo-christian values" that leads to "decent people"... it's almost too much. Funny and sad at the same time.
Your section on WG should probably mention that Coalition Honor Guard (a common) COMPLETELY destroys the archetype.
The name is just a reference to the internet's penchant for pictures of cats and the fact that it's a Soul Sisters deck; no clever puns involved.